Curved TVs

The new 55" Samsung curved TV is supposed to have 8 million pixels versus a normal HDTV with 2 million. I'm going to go look at one today, to see if I can see the difference. I wonder if the content supports the extra resolution?

There is precious little 4K source available now, and it looks like another two to three years before there is a significant amount. Of course, that means a new DVD player also. Right now, the Sony 4K DVD player only works with Sony 4K televisions.

As big a gadget freak as I am, this is one of those things that I would wait on. They will follow the trend of most electronics and fall in price greatly as they become more popular. And the hassle of incompatible TV/DVD player combos should be resolved.

Whether the upscaled picture from your BluRay player will look better - to you - is questionable. This article gives some good answers to question such as this.

It looked great in the store so I brought one home.

It has some sort of automatic up-sampling to make even old movies look high def.  Mrs NoCo was watching The Lion in Winter (1966) when I brought it home, so I have to wait until it's over to play with the controls.  But even Katherine Hepburn looks sharp on it. Incredibly sharp in fact.

Anxious to try a Blu-ray in it.

All hi-def TVs use up-conversion to rescale the picture to the TV's native resolution. In the case of going from 1080p to 4K, it's a simple matter of doubling every pixel horizontally and copying every line vertically. So you get 4 pixels for every pixel on a 1080p screen. For the same size screen, it will be much harder to see the pixels, but if you are sitting far away enough that the pixels cannot be discerned on a 1080 TV, you may not see much of a difference on a 4K display, but it may look just a bit sharper owing to new display technology. When they have 4K source material, the things should be amazing.

My copy of Lion in Winter (one of my wife's favorite movies) is 480p DVD; is yours the same?

Anxious to know how it works out for you. Are you able to do an A-B comparison?

A - B comparison? Not really. But I remember what my old TV looked like (a Samsung Ln46d550k1fxza 46" HDTV, which was the best picture I could find when I bought it two years ago). It was great and I should be able to move it on Craigslist. Not a scratch on it and it works perfectly.

But the new one is 55", and curved, and has 4x the pixels.

So.

Ours is a Samsung LN52B750 52-inch. The picture is great. But we sit about fifteen feet from it, so I don't know if the smaller pixels would make a significant difference with the same source resolution.

Maybe I need to find out.

Damn. I just looked at Samsung's web site and the 4K TVs have really come down in price. Maybe I should get myself one. Of course, to justify the expense I would probably need to get a 65-inch model. Can you tell me which model of the TV you bought? There are a bunch of them.

Samsung 55 Class 5458 Diag LED Curved 2160p Smart 4K Ultra HD TV Black
MODEL: UN55HU7250 $1499 at Best Buy which is $700 off list.

Tried BBC's Life and David Gilmour's High Hopes and Avatar and they all looked swell.  Better than the old TV?  Marginally, maybe 10%.

The biggest advantages so far are the up-conversion on non-HD content (watching Arsenic and Old Lace now and it looks freaking surprising!) and the curved screen doesn't reflect lights in the room. Oh, and the remote control is cool, it's a light you control on the screen to navigate all the onscreen menus.

_Howard wrote:

Ours is a Samsung LN52B750 52-inch.

According to a website on how to parse Samsung model numbers:

L = LED
N = North America
52 = size
B = 2009 (D = 2011, HU = 2014 ultra-HD)
750 = manufacturing code

The 65s were I think $2199, which is still good. But I don't have room.

It looks like the 7250 is the top non-3D curved screen model (unless you want to spend tens of thousands for a wall-sized tv. When Samsung will list the price of a $40,000 TV, you have to wonder about the ones for which they don't show the price).

$2199 for the 65" is actually a little less than I paid for my 52" HD a few years ago.
At that price, I may have to seriously consider it. I will have to decide if the pool table can handle the placement of a TV that size. I can tell my wife that I'm only doing it so we can put the 52" upstairs to replace her 27" Sony XBR CRT.

One of these days, I'm going to have to get someone to haul off my old TVs. I have a 36" Sony XBR CRT and and 60" Sony XBR rear projection (with a brand new $130 bulb) sitting in the store room. Both in excellent condition, and completely worthless, despite the original combined cost of around $7,000.

Yep, the only thing that comes down faster than list price is resale value.  I'll be lucky to get $300 out of my 46".

I think I paid $1600 or $1800 for it in late 2011.

Poking around with the settings -- I'm rarely satisfied with factory presets -- I am a whole new level of impressed.

This thing goes BRIGHT. And SHARP.

I'd say as far beyond my old HDTV as it was beyond the Sony Trinitron.

Ho-lee crap.  Playing Avatar with my new improved settings, and this thing looks sharper and crisper than in the movie theatre -- and I saw it in 3-d IMAX!!  I'm fucking gob-smacked.  It's frickin' amazing! I was only going to watch a scene or two and I ended up watching 2/3 of the movie, pausing frequently to soak in all the detail that flashes past.

You can actually see the texturing program they used for creating clothing. You can see the pores in the actor's faces -- and you can see that the alien's skin does not have pores (the renderers probably thought you'd never be able to see them). Little details like eyelashes or blades of grass are astonishing.

I'm going to have to watch Life of Pi again tomorrow on this thing.

OMFGIH.

NoCoPilot wrote:

Poking around with the settings -- I'm rarely satisfied with factory presets...

Maybe this will be helpful. It's for the 8200 but the settings should be about the same. At least it should give you a good starting point. I found a posting like this for my 60" XBR and it was really helpful. I found out how to get into the settings that are reserved for repair techs. Good stuff there.

NoCoPilot wrote:

You can see the pores in the actor's faces...

Not so sure that is a good thing.

I'm still trying to decide if a 65" display will fit without being in danger of having the butt of a cut stick smack into it. That would not be good.

Does that TV have PiP? I can't find any reference to it in Samsung's web site.

Quote :

Picture mode: movie
Backlight: 16
Contrast: 80
Brightness: 45
Sharpness: 0
Color: 46
Tint (G/R): 50/50

It's all personal preference, isn't it? Although I question a sharpness turned all the way off.

Mine:
Picture mode: natural
Backlight: 20
Contrast: 100
Brightness: 51
Sharpness: 100
Color: 46
Tint (G/R): 50/50

_Howard wrote:

Does that TV have PiP? I can't find any reference to it in Samsung's web site.

It has some proprietary Samsung thing called Multi-Link Screen which allows you to do a web browser, YouTube, or Samsung apps at the same time as TV. As to watching two shows at once, I don't think so.

_Howard wrote:

I'm still trying to decide if a 65" display will fit without being in danger of having the butt of a cut stick smack into it. That would not be good.

One suggestion: shorter sticks.

NoCoPilot wrote:

It's all personal preference, isn't it?  Although I question a sharpness turned all the way off.

Yes, it is absolutely personal preference. Which explains why you can go into someone else's home and see the color saturation turned up to unbelievable.

I did not look at the link I gave you; I got it off a forum about the 7200 Samsung, The sharpness setting is dependent on the source material. More sharpness is required for SD source than for HD, and probably very little if any would be required for 4K source material. Doesn't that sound reasonable?

NoCoPilot wrote:

As to watching two shows at once, I don't think so.

Bummer. I have gotten quite used to PiP. Don't use it often, but it is sometimes very handy. I even found the PiP on the Samsung I have to be a disappointment. It only shows the tuner input. On the Sonys I've had, you could select any input for the PiP.

Speaking of Sony... I went to their web site. They don't have any curved screens yet. It was a disappointment to see that they have turned the "XBR" model into a meaningless tag. Back in the day, the XBR was Sony's top of the line and the only difference between one XBR and another was the screen size. Now they have about a dozen XBR models ranging in price from $2,500 to $10,000 for the same size. It used to be easy to buy a Sony; just walk in and buy the XBR (if you could - not all dealers were allowed to carry it).

Maybe a rrealllllllly big screen. Found a site that carried the Samsung 105-inch model for only $115,000 and the 110-inch for $150,000. Seems excessive.

I just tried sharpness set to zero. I think it's a misprint. Makes HD look like SD.

NoCoPilot wrote:

_Howard wrote:

I'm still trying to decide if a 65" display will fit without being in danger of having the butt of a cut stick smack into it. That would not be good.

One suggestion: shorter sticks.

Not acceptable.

NoCoPilot wrote:

I just tried sharpness set to zero.  I think it's a misprint.  Makes HD look like SD.

But do you need it set to 100 for HD? To me, too much sharpness makes the picture look like a cartoon.

It's subjective. Anything between 80-100 looks like it really pops. In a crowd of faces it looks like you can see the individual hair strands on everyone.

Cartoonish? No, that's too much color saturation.